ou. Oh no, she did not mind staying in bed to-morrow to please
Avery, and she was sure she would like Avery's doctor though she didn't
expect he would manage to stop the cough. She would have to do her task
though all the same; dear Avery mustn't mind. You see, she had promised.
But she would certainly stay in bed if Avery wished.

And then came the tired sigh, and then that racking, cruel cough that
seemed to rend her whole frame. No, she would not finish for another hour
yet. Really she must go on.

The brown head dropped on to the little bony hands, and Jeanie was
immersed once more in her task.

More than once in the night Avery awoke to hear that tearing, breathless
cough in the room next to hers. It was no new thing, but in view of the
coming ordeal it filled her with misgiving.

When she rose herself in the morning she felt weighed down with anxious
foreboding.

Yet, when Maxwell Wyndham arrived in his sauntering, informal fashion at
about noon, she was able to meet him with courage. There was something
electric about his personality that seemed almost unconsciously to impart
strength to the downhearted. He had drawn her back from the very Door of
Death, and her confidence in him was absolute.

They lunched alone together, and talked of many things. More than once,
wholly incidentally, he mentioned her husband. She gathered that he did
not know of their bitter estrangement. He talked of the polo-craze, with
which it seemed Piers was badly bitten, and commented on his splendid
horsemanship.

"Yes, he is a wonderful athlete," Avery said.

She wondered if he deemed her unresponsive, but decided that he set her
coldness down to anxiety; for he finished his luncheon without lingering
and declared himself ready for the business in hand.

He became in fact strictly business-like from that moment, and throughout
the examination that followed she had not the faintest notion as to what
was passing in his mind. To Jeanie he was curtly kind, but to herself he
was as utterly uncommunicative as if he had been a total stranger.

The examination was a protracted one, and more painful than Avery had
thought possible. It taxed poor Jeanie's powers of endurance to the
uttermost, and long before it was finished she was weeping from sheer
exhaustion. He was absolutely patient with her, but he insisted upon
carrying the matter through, remaining when it was at last over until she
had somewhat recovered from the ordeal.

T